Exploit to easily cheese the campaign? (spoilers)

[MrBody 10]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but upon completing the campaign for only the first time, I spotted a way to effortlessly blitz through and win the whole thing while skipping or ignoring mechanics.

 

 

major campaign spoilers obviously

 

 

1st scenario- A cakewalk. Should have no trouble getting through it. At the end, choose to burn down the house. Get Lita ally card in the deck.

 

2nd scenario- Resign immediately (or at the first sign of things going bad if you wanted to play a little just for some experience points)

 

3rd scenario- Sit on main path the entire time, drawing cards until you get Lita. You WANT the doom to advance to the final agenda, which will make the ritual site appear without needing to gather clues from the woods. You do NOT want to gather any clues, since advancing Act 1 will spawn all the surviving unique cultists on the main path. Get to Agenda 3 without advancing the act deck, and you get the ritual site without spawning the cultists. This means you don't have to defeat any of them in the 2nd scenario (bonus it will start the doom already close to Agenda 2 at the beginning of 3rd Scenario). Move to ritual site, immediately use action to toss Lita to the ancient one. Win.

 

 

There are two things about the scenarios that seem like oversights:

 

1. The 3rd scenario act/agenda deck. It's a BAD thing to advance the Act deck with clues while it's a GOOD thing to advance the agenda deck with doom tokens. You need to advance the act deck to be able to defeat the ancient one with clues, but you could always just sacrifice Lita.

 

2. The choice at the end of scenario 1 is insanely lopsided. Getting the house location in scenario 2 vs. getting a great ally card and an auto-win button for the final scenario. You can even skip the 2nd scenario entirely! I mean, I guess you could say sacrificing your house to stop the mythos is a clear narrative choice, we were hoping for reasonably close outcomes for game purposes.

Edited November 14, 2016 by GrooveChamp

[Gaffa 673]

Since you're playing it in the privacy of your local play area, why not just skip having to draw cards and make decks and just say you get the results you want? Same result, and a lot less bother to deal with.

[MrBody 10]

No need to be snarky.

 

I'm asking if I missed something in scenario rules that meant there wasn't a legal "I win" button. As far as I can tell, making the burned house choice allows you to skip the 2nd scenario entirely then just sit in the starting location in the 3rd scenario building up until the 3rd agenda card where you automatically win.

 

It seems to be a design oversight if that's true.

 

I appreciate your contribution telling me to keep it to myself in my mom's basement.

Edited November 14, 2016 by GrooveChamp

[DarkFate 70]

But that resolution isn't exactly a great one. It is only slightly better than dying outright. 

[Doma0997 72]

Plus it's a pretty bad ending for those that want to take their character to another campaign right after. Sure, you could cheese it right now, but taking all that trauma and those weaknesses would be really bad for an extended campaign. Plus you're just choosing the bad ending essentially. Sure, it's an ending, but just imagine on the big screen it saying bad end.

[mplain 129]

Burning the house also gives you 1 mental trauma, while keeping it give the lead investigator 1 xp.

 

I agree that the 3rd scenario seems messed up in that you can just sit there drawing cards and hoarding money and preparing to face the boss (with Lita or without her), since killing the boss is actually easier than dealing with the cultists and the ritual site under time constraints. And you don't really care about cultists in scenario 2 if they never show up in scenario 3. And the scenario resolution for defeating the boss isn't really any better than for stopping the ritual (if you beat him honestly, without Lita). Sacrificing Lita doesn't really seem like a good outcome. 

[Drakthal 53]

Well it might be easiest to sacrifice Lita, a bit harder to kill the boss and perhaps the hardest to actually stop the ritual.

But thats the thing about an Arkham game. All 3 might say that you won, but one win is clearly more adventageous than the others. 

So if you want to jump right through and get the "Sacrifice Lita Chantler" ending, feel free to do so. However for me the only thing that counts as a win is to stop the ritual outright. 

Have done that on standard in a 2 player and a 4 player game so far. Now we are beginning to see whether we can do it on hard.

So to answer your question, no i dont think its a design flaw. Because most people will be trying to get R1 in the last scenario, and then the other endings are just desperate extra endings if all hell breaks loose.

Edited November 14, 2016 by Drakthal

[RegisF 7]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but upon completing the campaign for only the first time, I spotted a way to effortlessly blitz through and win the whole thing while skipping or ignoring mechanics.

 

 

major campaign spoilers obviously

 

 

1st scenario- A cakewalk. Should have no trouble getting through it. At the end, choose to burn down the house. Get Lita ally card in the deck.

 

2nd scenario- Resign immediately (or at the first sign of things going bad if you wanted to play a little just for some experience points)

 

3rd scenario- Sit on main path the entire time, drawing cards until you get Lita. You WANT the doom to advance to the final agenda, which will make the ritual site appear without needing to gather clues from the woods. You do NOT want to gather any clues, since advancing Act 1 will spawn all the surviving unique cultists on the main path. Get to Agenda 3 without advancing the act deck, and you get the ritual site without spawning the cultists. This means you don't have to defeat any of them in the 2nd scenario (bonus it will start the doom already close to Agenda 2 at the beginning of 3rd Scenario). Move to ritual site, immediately use action to toss Lita to the ancient one. Win.

 

 

There are two things about the scenarios that seem like oversights:

 

1. The 3rd scenario act/agenda deck. It's a BAD thing to advance the Act deck with clues while it's a GOOD thing to advance the agenda deck with doom tokens. You need to advance the act deck to be able to defeat the ancient one with clues, but you could always just sacrifice Lita.

 

2. The choice at the end of scenario 1 is insanely lopsided. Getting the house location in scenario 2 vs. getting a great ally card and an auto-win button for the final scenario. You can even skip the 2nd scenario entirely! I mean, I guess you could say sacrificing your house to stop the mythos is a clear narrative choice, we were hoping for reasonably close outcomes for game purposes.

 

I find you playthrough very roleplay... For somebody you just want to save his/her skin^^

No offence, but I don't want to win like that although I guess you're right. You can finish the game very quick, especially the 3rd part of the campaign in sacrifiyng Lisa.

anyway acting like that will lose  some precious xp points for the rest of the campaign (assuming you character won't die at the end of the first campaign)

[mplain 129]

Make a speedrun video!

 

Also count the total number of turns for the whole campaign, as well as the total number of times you had to reveal a token from the chaos bag. This could be a competition!

[player1329291 16]

Unfortunately you cannot win the scenario this way. Simply sacrificing Lita Chandler to Ancient One is NOT considered a win for investigators.

And as previously mentioned, any hopes for continuing the story of those characters in another campaing is lost.

[mplain 129]

And as previously mentioned, any hopes for continuing the story of those characters in another campaing is lost.

 

Huh? Why?

 

You get an extra Weakness, and you don't get the bonus XP, but you get the same amount of trauma as if you'd defeated the boss. It's a bit worse, but not by much. The resolution doesn't say that you win, but you don't lose either. It's a kind of a neutral, so-so resolution. Should be enough to be able to continue the story.

Edited November 14, 2016 by mplain

[player1329291 16]

And as previously mentioned, any hopes for continuing the story of those characters in another campaing is lost.

 

Huh? Why?

 

You get an extra Weakness, and you don't get the bonus XP, but you get the same amount of trauma as if you'd defeated the boss. It's a bit worse, but not by much. The resolution doesn't say that you win, but you don't lose either. It's a kind of a neutral, so-so resolution. Should be enough to be able to continue the story.

Using OP strategy, you get no experience from scenarios 2 and 3, also you get 2 extra physical trauma and extra weakness when compare to R1.

Even when compared to R2, no xp from exploring and killing cultists, no bonus xp and extra weakness.

It is not slightly worse, it is incredibly horrible and debilitating to your characters.

[mplain 129]

Some might call it a challenge

 

But you definitelly exaggerated by saying that "any hopes for continuing the story of those characters in another campaing is lost". There is still hope!

[player1329291 16]

Some might call it a challenge

 

But you definitelly exaggerated by saying that "any hopes for continuing the story of those characters in another campaing is lost". There is still hope!

You are right, there might be a story to tell, but probably it won't be a long or happy one...

[JJ48 7,102]

This seems to go back to the age-old conundrum of RPGs (this is no D&D, but the choices and branching outcomes seems to qualify).  Namely, do I act as my character regardless of the meta-game, or do I meta-game a bit and then worry about coming up with a plausible explanation, or do I meta like there's no tomorrow and not care about story impact so long as I get to an outcome that could be plausibly described as a "win"?

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the core set should be followed by a six-pack cycle which will likely continue the campaign, so it's a bit early to say what the best path is, or even whether there is a best path.

[mplain 129]

One thing to keep in mind is that the core set should be followed by a six-pack cycle which will likely continue the campaign, so it's a bit early to say what the best path is, or even whether there is a best path.

 

The core set will be followed by The Dunwich Legacy deluxe expansion, which will start a new campaign, which will then be followed by a six-pack cycle that will continue the Dunwich campaign.

[JJ48 7,102]

 

One thing to keep in mind is that the core set should be followed by a six-pack cycle which will likely continue the campaign, so it's a bit early to say what the best path is, or even whether there is a best path.

 

The core set will be followed by The Dunwich Legacy deluxe expansion, which will start a new campaign, which will then be followed by a six-pack cycle that will continue the Dunwich campaign.

 

 

Interesting.  Do we have any news yet on whether each cycle will be completely separate or whether an over-arching campaign will be possible?

[Network57 561]

One thing to keep in mind is that the core set should be followed by a six-pack cycle which will likely continue the campaign, so it's a bit early to say what the best path is, or even whether there is a best path.

 

The core set will be followed by The Dunwich Legacy deluxe expansion, which will start a new campaign, which will then be followed by a six-pack cycle that will continue the Dunwich campaign.

 

Interesting.  Do we have any news yet on whether each cycle will be completely separate or whether an over-arching campaign will be possible?

Intended to be separate stories but FFG says you can tie ten together as one long campaign. I think you pay 1 XP to do so? As a small cost to bringing pre-levelled decks into the new cycle.

[rsdockery 537]

It's 1 xp to include Curse of the Rougarou in any ongoing campaign. There's no cost for jumping straight from Night of the Zealot to Dunwich Legacy (as opposed to starting over), though you'll have a ridiculous amount of trauma and quite possibly some extra weaknesses.

 

Also: 

And the scenario resolution for defeating the boss isn't really any better than for stopping the ritual (if you beat him honestly, without Lita).

 

R2 gives and extra two trauma over R1, plus the possibility of an extra weakness from the Agenda deck.

Edited November 14, 2016 by rsdockery

[Robin Graves 6,054]

Hmph, that option to sac Lita and then the great old one happily goes away is BS in my book.  It should be, try to stop the ritual from happening, 85% of dying while fighting a great old one if it's summoned and if you fail it's goodbye to mankind.

[Robin Graves 6,054]

Burning the house also gives you 1 mental trauma, while keeping it give the lead investigator 1 xp.

 

I agree that the 3rd scenario seems messed up in that you can just sit there drawing cards and hoarding money and preparing to face the boss (with Lita or without her), since killing the boss is actually easier than dealing with the cultists and the ritual site under time constraints.

 

We managed to bag 4 of the 6 cultists in act two, so we just blitzed past the two remaining ones, taking two attack of oportunity damage and used cancel attack cards against the dark young that had spawned on the central path.

[Drakthal 53]

You do know that if you move from main path while engaged with the cultists they will follow you?

[Robin Graves 6,054]

You do know that if you move from main path while engaged with the cultists they will follow you?

 

Ooops! Guess those cultists didn't knew that!

 

So how the hell are you supposed to get past a group of 3 enemies all with +1 attack/evade and one that heals each turns (I got a dark young spawn there)? evade two of them, hope you make both rolls, move, take attack of oportunity , get hit during the enemy phase and on your next turn evade the last one ? jeeez.

 

Man I can't wait to get my second core so I can stick in one more dynamite blast.

[Khudzlin 734]

Throw them a chicken and run away.

[Robin Graves 6,054]

Throw them a chicken and run away.

 

Actually I'd rather kill them and eat the chicken.